The Point Podcast

On this episode of Selected Novels, Jess and Zach talk to Catherine Lacey about Evan S. Connell’s Mrs. Bridge . Want more from The Point ? Subscribe here at 50% off the normal rate.

On this episode of the podcast, Jess and Zach return to Selected Essays to talk to Ellen Wayland-Smith about Siddhartha Mukherjee’s “My Father’s Body, at Rest and in Motion,” published in the  New Yorker  in 2018. Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here at 50% off the normal rate.

On this episode of Selected Novels, Jess and Zach talk to the novelist and English professor Bruce Holsinger about John Williams’s Stoner . Want more from The Point ? Subscribe here at 50% off the normal rate.

On this episode of Selected Novels, Jess and Zach talk to the novelist and cultural critic Joanne McNeil about J.G. Ballard’s Concrete Island. Want more from The Point ? Subscribe here at 50% off the normal rate.

On the fourth episode of Selected Novels, Jess and Zach talk to the novelist and short story writer (and Point contributor) Jessi Jezewska Stevens about Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. Want more from The Point ? Subscribe here at 50% off the normal rate.

On the third episode of Selected Novels, Jess and Zach talk to the novelist Adam Ehrlich Sachs about Flaubert’s final, unfinished novel, Bouvard and Pécuchet . Want more from The Point ? Subscribe here at 50% off the normal rate.

On the second episode of Selected Novels, Jess and Zach talk to Clare Sestanovich, writer and managing editor of the Drift , about Marilynne Robinson’s first novel, Housekeeping . Want more from The Point ? Subscribe here at 50% off the normal rate.

On this episode of The Point podcast, Zach Fine takes a break from Selected Essays and Selected Novels to discuss another important, if less literary, topic: American football. Zach is joined by Leif Weatherby, the author of an essay just published this week in  The Point about the career of Aaron Rodgers against the backdrop of U.S. empire in decline, as well as Point editors James Duesterberg an...

On this episode—our very first!—of Selected Novels, Jess and Zach talk to novelist (and writer of our 2024 advice column, Higher Gossip) Lillian Fishman about Edith Wharton’s novel  Age of Innocence .  Want more from  The Point ? Subscribe  here at 50% off the normal rate.

On this bonus episode of Selected Essays , Jess and Zach talk to Dayna Tortorici and Mark Krotov about their new anthology of the best of n+1 ’s second decade, The Intellectual Situation . Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here at 50% off the normal rate.

On this episode of Selected Essays , Jess and Zach talk to George Scialabba about Michael Walzer’s "In Defense of Equality," first published in Dissent  in 1973. Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here at 50% off the normal rate.

On this episode of Selected Essays , Jess and Zach talk to writer and literary critic Emily Ogden about Elizabeth Hardwick’s "Living in Italy: Reflections on Bernard Berenson," first published in Partisan Review in 1960. Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here at 50% off the normal rate.

On this episode of Selected Essays , Jess and Zach talk to Julian Lucas about his essay “Welcome to Armageddon,” published in Cabinet in 2017, and Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Enigma of Edward FitzGerald,” which was written in 1951. Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here at 50% off the normal rate.

On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Greg Jackson about  his essay “ Within the Pretense of No Pretense ,” published in issue 31 of The Point , and Hannah Arendt’s “ Truth and Politics ,” first published in 1967 in the New Yorker. Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here at 50% off the normal rate.

On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Michael Clune about his essay “ The Anatomy of Panic, ” published in Harper's last May and  recently selected for Best American Essays , and Thomas Nagel’s “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” first published in 1974 in the Philosophical Review . Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here and use the coupon code 7POD50 at checkout...

On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Jennifer Wilson about her New York Times Book Review essay, “ The Love Letters That Spoke of Everything but Love ,” and Viktor Shklovsky’s “Art as Device,” first published in 1917. Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point  here  and use the coupon code 7POD50 at checkout for 50% off.

On this bonus episode of Selected Essays, Jess and Zach talk to Point editors, Jon Baskin and Rachel Wiseman about two of their favorite essays—Charles Comey's “ Against Honeymoons, ” and Moeko Fujii’s “ Let Them Misunderstand ”—and what makes them quintessential Point pieces.

On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Apoorva Tadepalli about Maeve Brennan’s “Lost Overtures” and her Electric Lit essay “ It’s Okay to Talk to Me When I’m Trying to Read. ”

On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Sumana Roy about Joseph Brodsky’s “Less Than One” and her Caravan essay “ We Are All Mamata Now .” Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here and use the coupon code 7POD50 at checkout for 50% off.

On the new episode of Selected Essays, Jess and Zach speak with Clare Bucknell about Charles Lamb’s “The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers”—surprisingly the first essay a guest has chosen that was written before 1900. In histories of the essay form, from Montaigne forward, you’ll often see Lamb’s name appear as one of the great “familiar” essayists, but he’s read relatively little today. Listen to hear C...

On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Suzy Hansen about her essay, “A Cold War Mind: American and the World,” a chapter from Suzy's book Notes on a Foreign Country , and Octavio Paz’s “The Pachucho and Other Extremes,”  the first part of his 1950 book  The Labyrinth of Solitude . Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here and use the coupon code 7POD50 at checkou...

Jess and Zach go over their favorite moments from the first season of “Selected Essays”—listen in for the highlights and then catch up in time for Season 2.

On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Garth Greenwell about his essay “A Moral Education: In Praise of Filth,” which was published in The Yale Review in 2023 and Martha Nussbaum’s " Flawed Crystals: James's The Golden Bowl and Literature as Moral Philosophy ," which originally appeared in the journal New Literary History in 1983 and was later collected in her...

On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Lauren Oyler about her essay “ Desperately Seeking Sebald ,” which was published in Harper’s in 2021 and Elif Batuman’s “ The Murder of Leo Tolstoy, ” which was also published in Harper's in 2009 and then later collected in her book The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them as “Who Killed Tolstoy?”

On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Ryan Ruby joins us to discuss Susan Sontag’s “Approaching Artaud” and his own essay “Dig It Up Again,” which was written for the 100th anniversary of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and published last year by Poetry magazine.